E3 kicked off yesterday. If you don't know what that is... this is what that is: it's the games industry's very own annual reveal-o, where it gets to showcase everything that it has in the works.
The first tiresomely corporate presentations were from Electronic Arts and Bethesda. I watched the EA one online - which struck a balance between three S-prongs: sports, Star Wars and shooting games. Don't get excited about the Star Wars news: there was barely any outside a slick presentation which promised much, but was light on detail.
You know: rather like a Donald Trump tweet, albeit with less of the self-congratulatory, inflammatory, hate speech and lies.
Of course, the other thing that happened at the weekend - just hours before the games industry began showing off its latest mass murder sims - was the worst mass-shooting in US history. A tragedy that Donald Trump was quick to turn to his political advantage.
The first tiresomely corporate presentations were from Electronic Arts and Bethesda. I watched the EA one online - which struck a balance between three S-prongs: sports, Star Wars and shooting games. Don't get excited about the Star Wars news: there was barely any outside a slick presentation which promised much, but was light on detail.
You know: rather like a Donald Trump tweet, albeit with less of the self-congratulatory, inflammatory, hate speech and lies.
Of course, the other thing that happened at the weekend - just hours before the games industry began showing off its latest mass murder sims - was the worst mass-shooting in US history. A tragedy that Donald Trump was quick to turn to his political advantage.
HATE SPEECH
I've thought about it, and I've come to the conclusion that I've never hated anyone as much as I hate Donald Trump.
I mean... I really, really hate him. I'm obsessed with how much I hate him. And I can't justify it really. It's visceral. It comes from the gut.
But it might not even be Trump himself that I hate, but the way he gets away with being Donald Trump. I hate that he's a product of our society in the West, and I hate that he stands a real chance of becoming the president of the most powerful country on the planet, and has done nothing to deserve that. I hate that he's merely unfurled his sails, and let the prevailing winds do the work.
I hate that he's the very epitome of the old adage about the people who seek power being the ones who are least qualified to hold a position of power.
I mean, I don't much like Hilary Clinton either - this is a nation of 320 million people, where anyone can be anything, apparently, yet in the past 20 years we've had the son of a former president assume office, and now the wife of a former president becoming one of the two-party system's nominees. Surely there has to be something wrong with that picture?
THE CHOICE
But the choice between Clinton and Trump is a no-brainer: you see, one is a no-brainer, because he has no brain. Sorry. No. That isn't fair, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make that joke. But it's true that Trump isn't appealing to the intellect: he's bypassing that and appealing directly to the most primal emotion there is - fear; our survival instinct.
Here's a man who decries the mass-shooting of 50 people as the work of Muslim terrorists, yet ignores the link between that and US gun laws. And it's unlikely to be any coincidence that the National Rifle Association has endorsed his campaign.
Trump is keeping scared people scared, and scared people want to be able to defend themselves. America wants to keep its guns, because its guns represent their freedom from fear. While, ironically, making them far less safe.
The country fetishises its weapons. For most of us in the UK, handguns are a fantasy. To us, a sawn-off shotgun is as much a mythical weapon as a lightsaber, BFG, or Gjallarhorn.
And I think Trump knows exactly what he's doing. I think he knows half the US electorate knows what he's doing. But he's banking on the ignorance of the other half, and them not waking up to it. I think that's why I hate Trump: I hate him because he's exploiting what he probably arrogantly assumes is the "stupidity" of his supporters. It's pure lust for power at any cost. That's his one and only value.
I've thought about it, and I've come to the conclusion that I've never hated anyone as much as I hate Donald Trump.
I mean... I really, really hate him. I'm obsessed with how much I hate him. And I can't justify it really. It's visceral. It comes from the gut.
But it might not even be Trump himself that I hate, but the way he gets away with being Donald Trump. I hate that he's a product of our society in the West, and I hate that he stands a real chance of becoming the president of the most powerful country on the planet, and has done nothing to deserve that. I hate that he's merely unfurled his sails, and let the prevailing winds do the work.
I hate that he's the very epitome of the old adage about the people who seek power being the ones who are least qualified to hold a position of power.
I mean, I don't much like Hilary Clinton either - this is a nation of 320 million people, where anyone can be anything, apparently, yet in the past 20 years we've had the son of a former president assume office, and now the wife of a former president becoming one of the two-party system's nominees. Surely there has to be something wrong with that picture?
THE CHOICE
But the choice between Clinton and Trump is a no-brainer: you see, one is a no-brainer, because he has no brain. Sorry. No. That isn't fair, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make that joke. But it's true that Trump isn't appealing to the intellect: he's bypassing that and appealing directly to the most primal emotion there is - fear; our survival instinct.
Here's a man who decries the mass-shooting of 50 people as the work of Muslim terrorists, yet ignores the link between that and US gun laws. And it's unlikely to be any coincidence that the National Rifle Association has endorsed his campaign.
Trump is keeping scared people scared, and scared people want to be able to defend themselves. America wants to keep its guns, because its guns represent their freedom from fear. While, ironically, making them far less safe.
The country fetishises its weapons. For most of us in the UK, handguns are a fantasy. To us, a sawn-off shotgun is as much a mythical weapon as a lightsaber, BFG, or Gjallarhorn.
And I think Trump knows exactly what he's doing. I think he knows half the US electorate knows what he's doing. But he's banking on the ignorance of the other half, and them not waking up to it. I think that's why I hate Trump: I hate him because he's exploiting what he probably arrogantly assumes is the "stupidity" of his supporters. It's pure lust for power at any cost. That's his one and only value.
CATS
Trump's wall, his Muslim ban, his secret plan to defeat ISIS, they're not considered pledges, and I think he knows it. He knows he hasn't thought it through. He knows it won't work, but it'll look like he's doing something at least, rather than any more considered approach.
When his plans fail - God forbid, if he gets into office - he'll just ramp up the rhetoric again, and say that ISIS are getting smarter, and that the efforts to defeat them have to get tougher. Bomb their families. Torture them. Nuke them...
"Just until we figure out what's going on," he'll say in that vague, nasally voice, while tonguing the Stars and Stripes, and peering at a black person through a telescope: "There's my African-American!"
Our neighbours recently put spikes on their fence, because our cats were allegedly shitting in their kid's sandpit. Have the spikes kept the cats out of their garden? Of course not. Perhaps they'd have been better off getting a sandpit cover. Maybe?
But it's a fair analogy: if the spikes represent Trump's wall or his Muslim ban, they're not going to be any more effective either. But that isn't the point. They're designed - if anything that off-the-top-of-his-head mouth-breather says can ever be described as "designed" - to be political chess pieces, not a solution
Trump's wall, his Muslim ban, his secret plan to defeat ISIS, they're not considered pledges, and I think he knows it. He knows he hasn't thought it through. He knows it won't work, but it'll look like he's doing something at least, rather than any more considered approach.
When his plans fail - God forbid, if he gets into office - he'll just ramp up the rhetoric again, and say that ISIS are getting smarter, and that the efforts to defeat them have to get tougher. Bomb their families. Torture them. Nuke them...
"Just until we figure out what's going on," he'll say in that vague, nasally voice, while tonguing the Stars and Stripes, and peering at a black person through a telescope: "There's my African-American!"
Our neighbours recently put spikes on their fence, because our cats were allegedly shitting in their kid's sandpit. Have the spikes kept the cats out of their garden? Of course not. Perhaps they'd have been better off getting a sandpit cover. Maybe?
But it's a fair analogy: if the spikes represent Trump's wall or his Muslim ban, they're not going to be any more effective either. But that isn't the point. They're designed - if anything that off-the-top-of-his-head mouth-breather says can ever be described as "designed" - to be political chess pieces, not a solution
THE FORCES
If you truly want a solution, you can't just blame radical Islam without blaming the forces that created radical Islam.
You can't just blame US gun laws, without also blaming all Western culture, which fetishes the gun - in its movies, its TV shows, its video games, its foreign policy, its corporate culture, and its news reports.
Our culture is a byproduct of who we are. We're all the problem.
Radicalisation exists, in part, because we acknowledge it exists. It exists because we exist. It exists because we talk about it, we - on some horrible level - revel in it. It's a problem that we have created. And since creating it, we have Hollywoodised it. We package it and sell it to shift units, to get clicks, to get audience share.
One of the times I visited Orlando when my kids were younger, I went to a shooting range. Like the other shooting range I'd visited previously, in Las Vegas, it was attached to the side of a gun shop. For anybody from the UK, walking into a US gun shop is a full on culture shock.
The staff all wear kevlar, and carry guns. There are weapons of every imaginable type. Not just air rifles like you get here, but big, eff-off, military grade weapons - shotguns, sniper rifles, fully automatics - that people can walk in off the street and rent, or buy to take home. And not just guns: big, nasty, knives. Laser sights. Silencers. Bullet proof vests. Tasers.
US shooting ranges often list their available guns in packages, which are based on your favourite movies: Rambo, The Terminator ("Uzi 9mm"), The Matrix. The one in Vegas has a "Gamer's Experience" - where you can borrow guns used in video games.
You pay your money, they check your passport, then they dump the guns and the ammo on the counter, you pick them up, and carry them through into the range.
I can't quite recall which package I went for, but in addition to firing an M16 machine gun, and a Magnum pistol, I also got to shoot an M60 - one of those meaty, belt-fed, tripod-mounted monsters. All of the targets showed life-sized photos of Muslim "terrorists", obviously.
All the guns I was familiar with from various games I've played. So, obviously, in addition to finding it all terribly distasteful, I also found it rather exciting. At the same time, it's also terrifying. Holding a gun, a proper gun, makes you feel powerful. It bucks and lurches when you fire it. You feel it through your entire body.
Of course it crossed my mind that I could've killed everyone else in that gun range, or myself. There wouldn't have been much to stop me taking that M16 back into the shop, and letting rip. In world where we can feel powerless, I can see how a gun gives the illusion of control.
If you truly want a solution, you can't just blame radical Islam without blaming the forces that created radical Islam.
You can't just blame US gun laws, without also blaming all Western culture, which fetishes the gun - in its movies, its TV shows, its video games, its foreign policy, its corporate culture, and its news reports.
Our culture is a byproduct of who we are. We're all the problem.
Radicalisation exists, in part, because we acknowledge it exists. It exists because we exist. It exists because we talk about it, we - on some horrible level - revel in it. It's a problem that we have created. And since creating it, we have Hollywoodised it. We package it and sell it to shift units, to get clicks, to get audience share.
One of the times I visited Orlando when my kids were younger, I went to a shooting range. Like the other shooting range I'd visited previously, in Las Vegas, it was attached to the side of a gun shop. For anybody from the UK, walking into a US gun shop is a full on culture shock.
The staff all wear kevlar, and carry guns. There are weapons of every imaginable type. Not just air rifles like you get here, but big, eff-off, military grade weapons - shotguns, sniper rifles, fully automatics - that people can walk in off the street and rent, or buy to take home. And not just guns: big, nasty, knives. Laser sights. Silencers. Bullet proof vests. Tasers.
US shooting ranges often list their available guns in packages, which are based on your favourite movies: Rambo, The Terminator ("Uzi 9mm"), The Matrix. The one in Vegas has a "Gamer's Experience" - where you can borrow guns used in video games.
You pay your money, they check your passport, then they dump the guns and the ammo on the counter, you pick them up, and carry them through into the range.
I can't quite recall which package I went for, but in addition to firing an M16 machine gun, and a Magnum pistol, I also got to shoot an M60 - one of those meaty, belt-fed, tripod-mounted monsters. All of the targets showed life-sized photos of Muslim "terrorists", obviously.
All the guns I was familiar with from various games I've played. So, obviously, in addition to finding it all terribly distasteful, I also found it rather exciting. At the same time, it's also terrifying. Holding a gun, a proper gun, makes you feel powerful. It bucks and lurches when you fire it. You feel it through your entire body.
Of course it crossed my mind that I could've killed everyone else in that gun range, or myself. There wouldn't have been much to stop me taking that M16 back into the shop, and letting rip. In world where we can feel powerless, I can see how a gun gives the illusion of control.
TALLIES
But what is weird, is how this tallies with something I was already feeling last week, while playing Mirror's Edge Catalyst. What really stands out about that game is that there's no shooting.
Your character only has melee attacks at her disposal, your enemies attack with weapons that fire electric charges. And at first it's jarring. But it's also refreshing, and made me realise how killing in games is just the default these days.
And that has butted up against the first day of E3, which - with the exception of FIFA 17's story mode (a bizarre idea, which I wholeheartedly support) - has given us a whole bunch of games where progress will be marked out by the trail of bodies you leave behind.
Bethesda's Dishonored 2 trailer, in particular, revels in how much murder it shows. They couldn't help the timing, obviously, but it didn't feel right in the wake of the worst mass shooting in US history. Similarly, the new trailer for EA's Battlefield 1 - a First World War game - glosses over the realities of that terrible conflict, in favour of boom-bang-a-bang pyrotechnics.
"No pain no gain" sings the man on the soundtrack, as somebody in a turban slams an axe into the chest of a faceless Nazi, and the guns and rockets become part of a percussive back-beat.
In the wake of the Orlando slaughter, it felt wholly inappropriate. More pertinently, I felt guilty, frankly, because I know I'm going to play it, I know I'm going to suppress my reservations about it, and I know I'm probably going to enjoy it. I know that I'm part of this society that we have built. I am part of the problem.
And yet, at the same time, there's part of me that is just feeling every so slightly worn down by it all. It has nothing to do with any moral objection - merely the familiarity with the rhythms of video game killing. My muscle memory is working on instinct now. Forwards, shoot, reload, strafe, cover, shoot, forwards, reload, melee, melee, shoot, reload. I am getting bored. And in getting bored of the killing, am I becoming inured to it?
But what is weird, is how this tallies with something I was already feeling last week, while playing Mirror's Edge Catalyst. What really stands out about that game is that there's no shooting.
Your character only has melee attacks at her disposal, your enemies attack with weapons that fire electric charges. And at first it's jarring. But it's also refreshing, and made me realise how killing in games is just the default these days.
And that has butted up against the first day of E3, which - with the exception of FIFA 17's story mode (a bizarre idea, which I wholeheartedly support) - has given us a whole bunch of games where progress will be marked out by the trail of bodies you leave behind.
Bethesda's Dishonored 2 trailer, in particular, revels in how much murder it shows. They couldn't help the timing, obviously, but it didn't feel right in the wake of the worst mass shooting in US history. Similarly, the new trailer for EA's Battlefield 1 - a First World War game - glosses over the realities of that terrible conflict, in favour of boom-bang-a-bang pyrotechnics.
"No pain no gain" sings the man on the soundtrack, as somebody in a turban slams an axe into the chest of a faceless Nazi, and the guns and rockets become part of a percussive back-beat.
In the wake of the Orlando slaughter, it felt wholly inappropriate. More pertinently, I felt guilty, frankly, because I know I'm going to play it, I know I'm going to suppress my reservations about it, and I know I'm probably going to enjoy it. I know that I'm part of this society that we have built. I am part of the problem.
And yet, at the same time, there's part of me that is just feeling every so slightly worn down by it all. It has nothing to do with any moral objection - merely the familiarity with the rhythms of video game killing. My muscle memory is working on instinct now. Forwards, shoot, reload, strafe, cover, shoot, forwards, reload, melee, melee, shoot, reload. I am getting bored. And in getting bored of the killing, am I becoming inured to it?
RECREATING REALITY
Ever since Space War, Space Invaders, Gun Fight, Tank, Sea Wolf... video games have cast you as a character or an object that shoots at things.
But somehow, also in those early days, games showed more variety, more creativity. Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, Breakout, Space Panic, Burger Time.
As games have become more capable of recreating reality, first and third-person shooters, slashers, and stabbers have become the default genre, so big budget games have shied away from invention. And it's a crying shame that Mirror's Edge Catalyst hasn't received a warmer reception - partly because it has received the precise reception it deserves - as it's going to discourage publishers from finding other new ways to spin the first and third-person genres, which don't involve guns.
That said, EA has to be commended: the company, which released the beautiful Unravel, is also investing in younger talent, through its EA Originals program. The first game out from this incentive is called Fe.
But overall, that's not where the money is. People want to play games where they kill to get ahead. I'm not saying that violent video games create violent people. I'm not drawing a parallel between violent video games, and what happened in Orlando at the weekend, or the rise of Donald Trump. But I am suggesting that there's no point denying that we're all part of a culture that glorifies and fetishes killing.
And I do wonder whether that's because it's all we're ever offered. From our game developers, from our film makers, from our politicians, and from our news reports...
Ever since Space War, Space Invaders, Gun Fight, Tank, Sea Wolf... video games have cast you as a character or an object that shoots at things.
But somehow, also in those early days, games showed more variety, more creativity. Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, Breakout, Space Panic, Burger Time.
As games have become more capable of recreating reality, first and third-person shooters, slashers, and stabbers have become the default genre, so big budget games have shied away from invention. And it's a crying shame that Mirror's Edge Catalyst hasn't received a warmer reception - partly because it has received the precise reception it deserves - as it's going to discourage publishers from finding other new ways to spin the first and third-person genres, which don't involve guns.
That said, EA has to be commended: the company, which released the beautiful Unravel, is also investing in younger talent, through its EA Originals program. The first game out from this incentive is called Fe.
But overall, that's not where the money is. People want to play games where they kill to get ahead. I'm not saying that violent video games create violent people. I'm not drawing a parallel between violent video games, and what happened in Orlando at the weekend, or the rise of Donald Trump. But I am suggesting that there's no point denying that we're all part of a culture that glorifies and fetishes killing.
And I do wonder whether that's because it's all we're ever offered. From our game developers, from our film makers, from our politicians, and from our news reports...
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